Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

USA Today’s College publication revisited the idea of the “creepy treehouse” when it shared two perspectives on faculty-student interaction via social media, specifically Facebook:

• One new friend request…from my professor? – Jenn DeLuca
• Friend request from your professor? This one hopes you accept – Rey Junco

Not unexpectedly, Jon Mott‘s blog post, “Outsourcing Our Memory to Google” set my mind thinking in productively curious directions–even if I’ve ended up with no conclusions, and, indeed, more questions than I began with.

I’ve finally gotten around to reading through Ong’s “Orality and Literacy” (more…)

The Chronicle’s Wired Campus column published a short commentary on the creepy tree house effect, quoting Alec Couros and myself. I then stumbled upon a couple really great blog posts on the subject that simply popped in response–definitely worth the read, as each offers an in-depth reaction to the concept and term:

• LilaTov Cocktail: “Creepy Treehouse” effect: Twitter & Facebook suck when they’re required by your professor
• Marie-Jose Klaver Met je professor in een boomhut (In a Treehouse with Your Professor) (Dutch — does “kippenvel” mean “goosebumps”?)
• AnneC Trouver l’équilibre (French — relates personal experiences with student resistance to instructor-implemented social media)
• History-ing: Creepy Treehouse

The persistence of this discussion should be encouraging for John Krutsch and Marc Hugentobler, who will be presenting at this year’s WCET Annual Conference specifically on the creepy tree house effect in a session titled “Taking the ‘Creepy’ Out of ‘Creepy Tree House’”. I look forward to seeing educators and administrators engage in discussion and debate on the meaningful/meaningless-ness of the term, any deleterious effects it might have on teaching and learning, and how we can leverage technology without wasting our time.